


Rescue.

by crimson_noir



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Pepper Potts, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 12:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20675327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_noir/pseuds/crimson_noir
Summary: This is how Virginia Potts copes after the events of Endgame. No one else, just her. Just her, and Rescue, and the memory of Tony in Morgan's eyes and everywhere else.





	Rescue.

Sometimes, Pepper thinks while the Suit unfurls around her. She knows why she’s doing this, sure, she knows there’s a threat less than 3 miles away from where she was having a board meeting, and she knows the leftovers of The Avengers will take time to reach the spot, and she knows that Rescue and War Machine are the two most powerful battle armors left. The last armors that Tony didn’t make for himself are now the most volatile Suits ever seen. It’s not the Suits though. 

It’s the people inside them. 

Rhodes (she physically aches to call him Rhodey, but he flinches whenever anyone tries, turns unbearably cold) is on a posting, as far away from America he could possibly get, with permit to burn to the ground. It’s unusual for him, all the violent ways in which terrorists are found dead (tell-tale repulsor holes through torsos, left fatally injured to bleed out, baking in the Afghanistan desert sun), but she guesses it isn’t unexpected. The government (or what’s left of it) is worried, but they can’t argue with the results, and they should have seen it coming.

They had mourned silently for too many damned days. 

Pepper knows it is irrational, while the Suit clings to her, a deadly dress of vibranium and titanium threaded with iron sure and strong (‘It’s a titanium-gold alloy,’ smiles the Tony in her head, the Tony of 15 years ago, looking at the newspaper which branded him with the name that he died for, when his mind was still dreaming, his hair still fluffy like downy feathers, his lips still untasted, they had been so young), but she cannot find it in herself to care these days. The only thing she cares for when the HUD flares? Morgan. So she keeps her little girl’s face (‘Last night—I dreamt that we had a kid, Pep, my eyes, your smile.’) on one corner of the screen (a blue HUD, memories of Jarvis and Tony and AC/DC) and flies out. 

When Rescue lands, villains flee. 

It’s a joke now, the name—Rescue, because she never leaves without death. She’s not as peaceful as the name suggests. Not civilian deaths, of course, she’s Virginia Potts, (Virginia Stark when she wants to be, but she never officially changed her last name and it hurts) CEO of Stark Industries, and she has to be perfect. It’s the guilty that die. It doesn’t matter just how big or small of a criminal they are, they die. How dare they go back to how it used to be; how dare they act like Tony’s death didn’t change anything? Nick Fury tries to talk to her, says that she’s just the level-headed sort they need. She hangs up.

‘I,’ she says to an empty room full of ghosts, ‘have literally been blowing up people for therapy.’ 

She incinerates them, villains who think they’re Thanos, experiments gone wrong, anyone and everyone. No one’s growing powerful enough to wield the Infinity Stones maliciously again. Not while she has weapons. 

She steps out of the armor after the threats are dead in designer business suits that probably cost more than the cost of the battle clean-up, clicks over to the dead body in 8-inch heels that flash like blades, and puts the heel to the latest (dead) villain’s forehead, to make it look at the sky. It’s thrilling, because she’s virtually unprotected then and anyone can kill her.

Why do they never do it? 

They now call her the Merchant of Death, weirdly appreciatively (or are they scared). Life has come full circle.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah...this. My first post on here! I kind of hate that it's so short, but it hurt too much to write Pepper hurting. 
> 
> Song rec – Hold Me Tight (Or Don’t) by Fall Out Boy (it’s about a person in love with a dead one and struggling to cope)


End file.
